(no subject)

I rewatched "Threads" last night. I know that due to the network the show is on, SPN has limitations, simple as that. But, I couldn't help thinking anyway that Ruth Beckett's ordeal makes Dean, Sam, Cas and Bobby all come off like total pussies complaining and crying about their (non)apocalypse (which is, as per usual in SPN, 90% bro-angst. Just like "Titanic"! The maudlin love affair more important than the thousands of people dying horrible deaths!). Shit, Ruth makes Future!Dean come off like a pussy. At least there was still companionship in 2014 and not everyone dying of radiation sickness or starving to death around him. Still some sort of structure from the previous, since-collapsed society. Ruth had... a hobo campfire and a newborn baby to take care of when she wasn't tilling the dead, irradiated land for any morsel of food.

I might rewatch "Children of Men" now, just to make me extra disappointed about SPN's apocalypse-that-wasn't. *sighs*

I honestly believe the writers in them had it in them to deliver something truly epic. They dropped the ball rather spectacularly. Though it's not like this season is bad. I've said before, as SPN seasons go, this one has been okay. As an apocalyptic storyline though? Total and utter joke. They really need to quit trying to be Kubrick or Gaiman, because they're really not either of them. At all.

'I've said before, as SPN seasons go, this one has been okay. As an apocalyptic storyline though? Total and utter joke.'So true. I'm guessing they were trying for an anticlimactic Apocalypse (as in Good Omens) but that's very hard to do on tv. Maybe if they had had more time to tighten up the scripts (like they did in season four because of the writers strike) they would have been able to pull it off.

I swear to God, dude. S4 & S5!Dean = Theo Faron. The characters have the same damn demeanor (bone tired and apathetic facing the end of the world, yet still are the hope of the world and somehow have to dig deep to keep going), Dean's just more of a bruiser. I honestly believe the SPN writers might have been able to pull off a CoM sort of story arc for the season. Maybe not at the level of Cuaron's artistry, but, after S4, I think they could have managed to come close. It would have been glorious. Something truly poignant and urgent that built off of S4's momentum... instead of basically tossing it aside for the "party apocalypse".

Though it's not like I think the season has necessarily been bad, but one really does expect more from a word like "apocalypse" than maybe two or three directly apocalyptic eps.

It's true. If they'd cut out the filler and ramped up the stakes, this apocalypse could have been stunning, but instead they wanted to get their dose of MOTW in, their pointless comedy, introduce plot points and then leave them hanging, and have Sam and Dean wander the countryside doing NOTHING instead of having any plan of action. *sigh*

The best apocalypse stories are incredibly humanistic stories IMO. CoM, Threads (though on the completely tragic end), On the Beach, Tarkovsky's The Sacrifice, etc. Kripke always claimed that that's where he believed the bread & butter of SPN was, the humanistic story. Though instead of giving us that, he gave us largely recycled Dean & Sam BRO-ANGST and poor attempts at "gallows humor" (Edlund mentioned they were going for that at the SDCC last year. Too bad they ended up more on the "Tommy Boy" side of the fence rather than "Dr. Strangelove" or Good Omens). :/ Lame.

I see now where you got your wanting for nuclear winter-style apocalypsoi that you mentioned in your email to me. :P I agree. Apocalypses are supposed to be horirble. Not the 'meh' laughfests they've been pushing on us with overdone family histrionics and bro-angst (which isn't quite convincing).

Yeah, it's tough to pull off Strangelove or Good Omens styles of apocalypses. Kripke should have kept it more mundane. Though mundane didn't mean it had to be mediocre. However, I think Kripke believed he had to give us "The End" every week. He wouldn't have had to do that. Hell, look at the series "Jericho" (though post-apoc that technically was), you never actually saw the cities destroyed, but the atmosphere and tone of the series was always heartfelt, even suspenseful (despite lacking the supernatural mayhem), and that show had an ensemble cast to juggle. S5 has felt like the Chekhov gun introduced in the first half, but then it never goes off. I think we'll always be waiting for that gun to go off. :/

IDK bb. I've not watched Strangelove, so I can't comment, but-- Even in Good Omens you got the sense of "Oh crap the cow manure is about to hit the oscillating device" but at the same time there was this bizarre sense of calm underlying it all; granted said calm was more of a DON'T PANIC WE'RE NOT DONE FOR YET variety. But still! There was a sense of urgency, understated, but there impelling the events forward. With luxuriant lashings of snark and PTerry's wonderful offbeat humour of course. And Gaiman's darkly mythic imaginings.

Going OT: How do you like my new user avatarpic? Pretty yes? I'm going to try and redesign the journal, but not till next week, or possibly Sunday at the earliest.